Bid to tackle extremism in US military unlikely to be revived under Trump
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Twin terror attacks bring renewed focus on scourge of extremism, but efforts to effect change have so far stalled. The deadly New Year’s Day terrorist attacks in New Orleans and Las Vegas have brought renewed attention to the scourge of extremism in the US military, but efforts to tackle it wilted in the later years of the Biden administration, and are unlikely to be revived once Donald Trump begins his second term this month.
Both the New Orleans vehicle attack that killed 14, and the explosion of a Tesla Cybertruck outside a Trump hotel in Las Vegas in which the driver died, were perpetrated by discharged or serving members of the armed forces. Though investigators have yet to officially link the events, they follow a pattern of active or veteran military personnel involvement in acts of domestic terrorism, including the 6 January 2021 Capitol riot; a white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 2017; and the 2009 mass shooting at the former Fort Hood army base in Texas that killed 13.
In response to the series of deadly events, defense secretary Lloyd Austin promised to tackle longstanding failures by the US military to address the problem. In 2021 he announced a series of initiatives, including a working group to study white nationalism and other extremist behavior within the defense department, and the commissioning of an independent report to review the issue and make recommendations.
The efforts, however, fizzled. Congressional Republicans effectively killed the Countering Extremism Working Group in December 2023, starving it of funds in the annual defense authorization bill, months after CNN reported the Pentagon group had “vanished virtually without a trace” because of what analysts said was a concerted Republican “war on woke”.
